I know, it should start with Step 1: Finding a Project and Being Accepted, but lets do it a little bit around.
Let's say you already had been accepted, you are ready, excited and a little bit worried (maybe it's your first time, maybe you don't trust your language, maybe it's hard to leave your friends or significant other, maybe it's a little bit of everything). But there's still thousand and one questions in your head, and you have no idea how everything will work, moreover you either think it's gonna be the best vacation time in your life (wrong!) or you gonna change the entire world (yeah...).
But your National Agency (I guess we will need to write small dictionary of Erasmus+) wont let you alone. They, or your Sending Organisation prepares something called Pre-Departure Training, one of few you will take part in. The First One.
I'm not certain that information, but who prepares your pre-departure training will depend on how many participants goes from your sending organisation or country. I assume, if there's just one person per organisation, it may be easier if NA does it. And in the case when just your sending organisation has almost 10 departing soon, well.
But what's the thing about it?
You are introduced to the concept of volunteering. It's seems to be term easy to define, but when it comes to that, everything gets a bit tangled. Then, there's all section for Erasmus+ ant what it actually is. You talk about Youth in Action programme and European Voluntary Service (EVS! Now you know where those letters come from!). Don't worry, they tell you about your rights and responsibilities as EVS volunteer. You should feel free to ask your own questions, that's also time to come up with your doubts and worries. What's your motivation? What are your expectations? What are your learning objectives? Those are pretty good questions your trainer is responsible to take care about. Also important is to speak about culture shock, what it is and how it really works. How to deal with it.
Last but not least, make friends. Because the people who are at the training course will go through the same/similar experiences as you will. It's important to have somebody to talk about it with. Your 'old friends' may sometimes don't exactly understand what you are through, and they are for sure great people, just with difficulties to relate to your words.
Agnes: My training course was a blast, however I assume it wasn't exactly the same as usually. The people who I met were pretty amazing and we got along easily. Some of us already had experiences of living abroad, so there was not much to talk about culture shock. We talked about main objectives of EVS, rules, doe's & dont's, conditions, everything. It was laud and a lot of laugh. For me it was one day trip to Krakow, since my sending organisation has its office there. We completely skipped ice-breaking games, since there was no 'ice to break'. The trainer, amazing woman with great experience got us through everything smoothly. Then it was already late afternoon and well... I had to hurry up for my train back home.
Jorge: Unfortunately for me, reading the experiences from Agnes, my pre-departure training was a little bit different of what she is describing. I just went to a reunion with my sending organization, where they asked me if I had any doubt, they explained me some things and I signed the agreement and the medical insurance. I didn't have any doubts: recently I had done a youth in action project, so I knew about how everything worked. I also had lived in Portugal yet, so there it wasn't anything new for me. And that was all, less than 30 minutes.
Emile: My pre-departure training was on a entire weekend with people who had many different project : We were only 3 EVS in the group. There were an association which wants to make a project around dance in Burkina Faso, for example, and others journey in an associative framework. Anyway it is concerning people who are going to stay in a foreign country for more or less time.
For me, the positive aspect of this weekend is that it allowed me to mentally project myself in the journey, (Be careful, too much projections can create too much expectations, which are often not filled!) and being aware of my deep motivations, even those you don't want to say to everybody.
We saw through different games that we all have prejudices between cultures when they don't really know each others, and how they were born.
Also, I realised that you are not meeting a culture when you are travelling, but you are experiencing one person after another and at this point you can make your own vision about that culture.
We did a lot of role games around cultural exchange, to make us aware of the differences between 2 cultures, and to help us understand how we react in multicultural situations.
But your National Agency (I guess we will need to write small dictionary of Erasmus+) wont let you alone. They, or your Sending Organisation prepares something called Pre-Departure Training, one of few you will take part in. The First One.
I'm not certain that information, but who prepares your pre-departure training will depend on how many participants goes from your sending organisation or country. I assume, if there's just one person per organisation, it may be easier if NA does it. And in the case when just your sending organisation has almost 10 departing soon, well.
But what's the thing about it?
You are introduced to the concept of volunteering. It's seems to be term easy to define, but when it comes to that, everything gets a bit tangled. Then, there's all section for Erasmus+ ant what it actually is. You talk about Youth in Action programme and European Voluntary Service (EVS! Now you know where those letters come from!). Don't worry, they tell you about your rights and responsibilities as EVS volunteer. You should feel free to ask your own questions, that's also time to come up with your doubts and worries. What's your motivation? What are your expectations? What are your learning objectives? Those are pretty good questions your trainer is responsible to take care about. Also important is to speak about culture shock, what it is and how it really works. How to deal with it.
Last but not least, make friends. Because the people who are at the training course will go through the same/similar experiences as you will. It's important to have somebody to talk about it with. Your 'old friends' may sometimes don't exactly understand what you are through, and they are for sure great people, just with difficulties to relate to your words.
Agnes: My training course was a blast, however I assume it wasn't exactly the same as usually. The people who I met were pretty amazing and we got along easily. Some of us already had experiences of living abroad, so there was not much to talk about culture shock. We talked about main objectives of EVS, rules, doe's & dont's, conditions, everything. It was laud and a lot of laugh. For me it was one day trip to Krakow, since my sending organisation has its office there. We completely skipped ice-breaking games, since there was no 'ice to break'. The trainer, amazing woman with great experience got us through everything smoothly. Then it was already late afternoon and well... I had to hurry up for my train back home.
Jorge: Unfortunately for me, reading the experiences from Agnes, my pre-departure training was a little bit different of what she is describing. I just went to a reunion with my sending organization, where they asked me if I had any doubt, they explained me some things and I signed the agreement and the medical insurance. I didn't have any doubts: recently I had done a youth in action project, so I knew about how everything worked. I also had lived in Portugal yet, so there it wasn't anything new for me. And that was all, less than 30 minutes.
Emile: My pre-departure training was on a entire weekend with people who had many different project : We were only 3 EVS in the group. There were an association which wants to make a project around dance in Burkina Faso, for example, and others journey in an associative framework. Anyway it is concerning people who are going to stay in a foreign country for more or less time.
For me, the positive aspect of this weekend is that it allowed me to mentally project myself in the journey, (Be careful, too much projections can create too much expectations, which are often not filled!) and being aware of my deep motivations, even those you don't want to say to everybody.
We saw through different games that we all have prejudices between cultures when they don't really know each others, and how they were born.
Also, I realised that you are not meeting a culture when you are travelling, but you are experiencing one person after another and at this point you can make your own vision about that culture.
We did a lot of role games around cultural exchange, to make us aware of the differences between 2 cultures, and to help us understand how we react in multicultural situations.
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